Eclipsed
by SplendentGoddess
Summary: Songfic - A contemplative look at our favorite couple's feelings prior to the conclusion of the manga. With their destiny still so uncertain, can Inuyasha and Kagome overcome the shadows that have eclipsed their hearts?


Blanket Disclaimer:

Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.

"Eclipsed" is written by and is the property of Evans Blue. I am in no way affiliated with Evans Blue or Hollywood Records.

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A/N:

This story takes place between manga chapters 474 and 475, after the confrontation with Kaou, but before they rush off to investigate a strange light that turns out to be Kanna's mirror-monster. An undisclosed amount of time passes between those two chapters, but the comment that Inuyasha gets restless when nothing is happening tends to suggest that they did not immediately run off again right after facing the flower-youkai. Yes, in reality it's documented that Kagome doesn't return home again until chapter 494, but I'm taking some creative liberties.

I'm also unsure exactly when the ordeal with Kaou was supposed to have taken place, in relation to Kagome's entire mission in the past, but I think her mission as a whole was supposed to have taken less than a year, so since the manga started in the summer, I'm going out on a limb and guessing that it's been about six months (give or take) for when this one-shot takes place, meaning it's currently autumn. It's a fairly educated guess, since on page 7 of chapter 475, when the gang is being told of the strange light by some random villagers, you can clearly see what I believe to be rows of cabbage planted in a garden, and if it's late cabbage, that must be planted during the heat of summer, then the heads would be as developed as shown during the cooler months of autumn.

Well…that's enough rambling from me…on with the show!

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~*~*~*~ **Eclipsed** ~*~*~*~

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The late autumn evening was unusually pleasant, or perhaps it was that he was too numb to feel the cold breeze as he sat on his favorite branch, but whatever the reason, Inuyasha ignored the louder than usual rustle of drying leaves that shook in the branches above him as he contemplated recent events.

He had come so close to losing her, again.

When that Kaou bastard had risen above Kagome, in that split second before he'd ordered her not to move as he'd managed to cut the flower-youkai down once and for all, Inuyasha had been terrified. While it was true that Kagome had come a long way in only a few short months, and was no longer the helpless, clumsy girl she'd once been, there were still times that her foolishness managed to stop his heart in his chest.

Like when she followed him against his wishes into traps concocted by random youkai hell-bent on taking his life. Try to scold her in his mind as he might, Inuyasha knew that were it not for Kagome's selflessness, he would've been flower food. She'd had to remove the talisman Miroku had given her for protection, tying it to her arrow in order to pierce Kaou's barrier, thus exposing herself to those pain-consuming weeds. He still couldn't get the image of her entangled in those vines out of his head. What would have happened had he not seen her arrow and rushed out to find her? But then again, she never would have been put in that position in the first place, were it not for him. In the end, they had saved each other that night.

Kaou's taunting words still rang in his ears.

"_That girl's soul is even more wounded than yours_._" _

Even though Kagome had managed to come-to in time to stop Kaou from spilling her secret, Inuyasha wasn't nearly as stupid as he often pretended to be. While it was true that he'd been so caught up in his own misery that he hadn't realized at the time that he wasn't the only one suffering, he knew damn well what the cause of Kagome's pain was.

It was him.

Inuyasha hadn't been as shocked to learn that Kagome held secret pain, though, as he was to learn that the damage to her soul actually surpassed his own. With the life he'd led to date, he hadn't thought such a feat would be possible. What the hell had he been doing to her all this time?

He knew Kagome cared for him…check that…he knew Kagome loved him. And, hopefully, Kagome knew he loved her. But things were just so complicated at the moment, and the whole 'Kikyou' thing was only part of it. Granted, a large part. Okay, more than half.

Damn it all.

Everyone knew how good his hearing was, so there was no way Kagome couldn't have realized that he'd heard her confession of love right when he'd busted through the wall to rescue her from Akago and Kagura that one time. It was just one of those things that they silently agreed never to talk about. He was an ass, but she loved him anyway; everybody knew that. When Kagome had asked him point blank if he'd wanted to go with Kikyou, during his vision courtesy of that overgrown magnolia, he honestly hadn't known what to tell her. But truth be told, it wasn't a very fair question. After all, he was being manipulated, royally mind-fucked was more like it, and his emotions were as torn open as Kaou's body later became. What Inuyasha did know was that the sound of Kagome's voice had brought him to his senses, and that hadn't been the first time, either, that the sound of her voice had broken a spell meant to disable his mind. Shouldn't that have told her something? The answer to her question, did he want to go with Kikyou, was both yes, and no. While in his dream-state, yes he had wanted to go with her, but your mind was hardly your own while unconscious, and who could rightfully blame someone for their dreams? When Inuyasha had woken up and realized what'd almost happened, he'd thanked the kami that Kagome had come to his rescue.

Didn't Kagome realize how important to him she actually was? Or was she too busy blocking out the pain in her own heart to notice? Pain that he inadvertently caused her while constantly trying to mask his own.

_**We love our tragedies.**_

_**We're both broken in our own little ways.**_

_**We're broken, but we fit together just right.**_

_**You know I saw the black inside your eyes; **__**I saw they were eclipsed, by mine...**_

_**...and they looked just right.**_

As the evening slowly turned into night, Inuyasha continued to sit in his favorite branch of the Goshinboku, contemplating life. Most people thought him simple-minded, but just because he didn't let others see him think didn't mean he didn't do it. Kagome was currently in her own time, trying to catch up on her schoolwork. While he might piss and moan, and tell her that he didn't see why she needed to waste her time with that place, the truth was that he did understand. Nobody knew what would happen once the sacred jewel was finally complete and Naraku defeated, if Kagome would still be able to travel between both worlds, or if she would be forced to choose…or if she would even be _given_ a choice at all. Kagome had made it perfectly clear that she needed to be prepared to have a future in her world, just in case, and that meant having a good education. The way she'd said it, though, had implied that were she given the option to choose which timeline she resided in, she would pick the past. He hoped she would, at least. He hoped that in the end, her feelings for him were enough for her to decide to stay. But then again, what if she was waiting to hear how he felt in return? What if she chose her own world instead of his simply because she believed her feelings to be one-sided? Maybe he should just get over himself, find some courage, and tell her to her face what she really meant to him.

Chuckling to himself with a bit of dark humor, Inuyasha wondered if Kagome would even recognize him if he did something as out of character as that. She would probably believe him to be some illusion of Naraku's. But then again, Inuyasha seriously doubted that Kagome would fall for such an illusion, should the dark hanyou ever truly try to trick her with a false image of himself, nor would he ever be fooled by a fake Kagome. They might have issues, serious issues, when it came to admitting their feelings out loud, but when it really boiled down to it, there was a connection between them that spoke volumes all its own.

_**When our lights meet, will you know me then, **__**and will you want to know it?**_

_**It feels like I've known you for so long.**_

_**When our lights meet, will you want me then, **__**and will you ever know it?**_

_**It seems like you've known me for so long.**_

Staring out her bedroom window, Kagome sighed as her eyes lazily remained fixed on the Goshinboku, knowing she should be studying but unable to concentrate. Everything that had happened recently was still running around doing summersaults in her mind, and as her eyes stared unfocused at the swaying branches of the sacred tree, the miko couldn't help but to wonder what Inuyasha was doing right then.

_Come on Kagome, pay attention,_ she scolded herself as she sat back down at her desk, knowing she had a test coming up soon.

She needed to do well with her schooling, just in case… Oh, but how she wished she could avoid her mind always finding its way back to that same subject, over and over again, like her subconscious was a pull-string toy that only knew one phrase. She honestly didn't know what she would do if she were ever forced to choose between the past and the present. Between her family…and the one she loved. She knew she would miss her family terribly if she were ever forced to never see them again, but…leave Inuyasha? Never see _him _again? Her mind couldn't even contemplate her life without the surly hanyou in it. She knew that were she given no other option, she could learn to adjust to life in the past, but there was no way in all the ten hells that she could ever hope to reassimilate herself into the average life of a teenage girl from modern-day Tokyo. It just wasn't happening. Kagome knew that she'd seen way too much, done way too much, to even possess a single iota of delusion that she could ever be an 'ordinary' woman.

That might have been her goal in a past-life, but Kagome now understood what Kikyou hadn't wanted to accept. She was _not _ordinary, and never would be. Simple as that. It surprised Kagome to think so casually of Kikyou in regard to the woman's life being her own, but it was true, after all. She _was _Kikyou's reincarnation, and while she would forever remain adamant that she and Kikyou were _not _the same person, they were the same soul, and finally coming to accept that had given Kagome a sense of peace that had finally lifted some of the darkness from her heart. She had come to terms with her connection to Kikyou long ago, when she'd acknowledged that both she and her predecessor were alike in their desire to be with Inuyasha. Kagome had been telling the truth when she'd said that acknowledging that connection had made her feel a bit better.

But just because she had come to terms, in a way, regarding the whole 'Kikyou' thing did not mean that Inuyasha had, and the source of Kagome's greatest pain lied in the uncertainty regarding where she stood in her hanyou's heart. She knew he loved her, in some fashion or another, but did he truly comprehend how deeply _her_ feelings ran for _him?_ It was so hard for either of them to express their feelings for the other aloud, but it was the little things he did that proved that he at least cared for her. Kagome might feel depressed at times, but she wasn't all emo, suffering from self-loathing delusions that she still meant nothing more to Inuyasha than a detector for jewel shards. That said, she still wasn't sure how he truly did feel about her. He'd told her once, that while he had compared her to Kikyou in the beginning, he now knew that there was no replacement for her.

"_Kagome is Kagome_._"_

Well, that was one way of putting it.

When it really boiled down to it, Kagome believed Inuyasha back when he'd said that he couldn't forget about Kikyou, but that he also wanted her in his life, as well. In Kagome's opinion, it was no coincidence that the two of them had met, and if you wanted to bring the foiled destiny of fifty years prior into things and say that Kikyou had been meant to be his soul mate…well, didn't that still also mean that…so was she?

_**I love your analogies.**_

_**We're both crazy in our own little ways.**_

_**We talk about the future and our past lives.**_

_**I know I loved you then.**_

_**I know I'd love you now.**_

_**I know I'll love you then.**_

_**I know I love you now!**_

Maybe she shouldn't have silenced Kaou when the flower-youkai was getting ready to spill the beans regarding the pain in her heart, as that would have at least broken the ice on the subject. She really needed to stop being such a coward, and just come out and tell him how she felt already. But then again, Kagome was sure that Inuyasha must have _some _clue as to her feelings for him. He must have heard her scream them at the top of her lungs when that baby was trying to latch onto the darkness in her heart. If only she knew how he truly felt about her in return. He had cried tears of blood for Kikyou's sake, so it was obvious that the wound still ran deeply in his heart, but…Kagome hoped, it was a wound that she was slowly healing, just as the wound in her own heart was getting smaller as time went by. Kaou had called Kikyou the woman whom Inuyasha had loved most in all the world, but while that thought pained her, while Kagome knew that a part of Inuyasha would _always_ love Kikyou, she also knew that it was possible to fall in love again, to feel love for more than one person. While it made her sad to know that his heart still yearned for Kikyou, that sadness was honestly stemmed in part from merely sympathizing with _his_ pain. Simply put, it hurt her to see the man she loved hurting, but Kagome didn't mind sharing his heart with Kikyou's memory any longer. She wouldn't have been able to retrieve the bow from Mt. Azusa had she not genuinely wanted to save Kikyou…and she was slowly coming to accept her failure in that regard, as well. Yes, there was still darkness in her heart, but there was also light, combating the darkness. She could see it within herself, just as she could see it within Inuyasha, as well. He too had a growing spot of light in his heart, fighting off the darkness, not unlike the battle waging within the Shikon no Tama itself.

_**When our lights meet, will you know me then, **__**and will you want to know it?**_

_**It feels like I've known you for so long.**_

_**When our lights meet, will you want me then, **__**and will you ever know it?**_

_**It seems like you've known me for so long.**_

Back at her window, with eyes traveling up the branches of the Goshinboku once more, Kagome could almost envision Inuyasha's red-clad form resting on his favorite bough. No, it no longer bothered her that she was Kikyou's reincarnation. Truth be told, she found the idea of her destiny being foretold in such a way utterly romantic. She was supposed to fall down the well. She was supposed to free Inuyasha from his eternal slumber. She was supposed to right the wrongs of the past. Lowering her gaze, Kagome's eyes focused on the bare spot of the Goshinboku's trunk. The same tree where she'd first met him, still standing proudly in her own backyard.

_**It seems like I've known you for so long.**_

Standing under a canopy of leaves, Inuyasha stood at the base of the Goshinboku, his bare feet impervious to the chill of the nighttime grass as he stared up at the spot where he had once been pinned. Yes, it had definitely been fate that had sent Kagome to revive him on that day, but whether or not that ultimately meant that it was fate for Kagome to _stay _in his time was another matter entirely. While he hoped, prayed, that were she given a choice, she would choose his time, the fact remained that such an option might not even exist. He knew she wanted him to confess his true feelings, but what if he went and told her how he felt, only to have her ripped away from him in the end? He wasn't sure he would be able to stand it if she was separated from him at all, let alone if they were separated after confessing their feelings aloud to each other. The truth was, he did love her, more than he'd ever thought it possible to love another living being.

_**But you can't have everything you want, when you want it.**_

Sighing, Kagome stepped away from her window once more. She really needed to get some studying done. She didn't know what would happen when the sacred jewel was finally purified, so just blowing off her schoolwork would be far too irresponsible of her. Although, if in the end it was proven that all her of studying was pointless after all, she wouldn't be too upset with that outcome. Even if Inuyasha didn't confess his undying love, were she given the choice, Kagome would still choose to remain in the past. She knew he cared for her in his own way, and she knew that he would be crushed were they permanently separated from one another, just as she would be. Maybe, one day, their relationship would grow beyond friendship. She would be ready for him, if he ever decided he had something to tell her.

_**I will be everything you want, when you want it.**_

Closing her schoolbook with a sense of finality, Kagome decided to get ready for bed, knowing she couldn't get any more studying done on that night. Not that she could recall half the stuff she'd just spent over an hour trying to learn, her mind busily occupying her thoughts with visions of inu-hanyou dressed in fire-rat amour. Inuyasha always got so upset whenever she asked to return to her own time, but he knew she would always come back to him, didn't he? She had promised to stay by his side, and so long as the choice continued to remain within her control, she would always keep that promise. The others had told her once that whenever she was away, Inuyasha stayed near the well, like a lost puppy missing his best friend. Kagome seriously doubted that he'd care about her absence so much if his only concern was the jewel shards.

_**Wait for me...**_

_**Trust for me...**_

_**Fall for me...**_

_**Even when you don't know you're falling for me.**_

Turning to make his way towards Kaede's hut for the night, so that he could better guard the humans and kitsune that were under his protection, Inuyasha paused in his slow trek as he caught sight of the Bone Eater's well. He wished he knew what destiny truly had in store for them, both he and Kagome. Did he dare risk opening himself up to heartbreak once more? Had he truly been given a second chance at love?

_**Will you fall for it? If it should, it'll come around again.**_

But what about what was best for Kagome? If given the choice, should she really just give up on everything she'd ever known, the future she was meant to have, a loving family…all for his sake? Could he truly ask her to sacrifice so much of herself, just for him? Just how selfish _was_ he? And what if he failed her somehow? What if she gave up everything she'd ever known to be with him, just to end up regretting that decision in the end?

_I'm sorry, Kagome…_

_**But don't wait for me, and don't trust in me.**_

_**Don't fall for me, even when you know you're falling for me.**_

_I'm sorry…but damn it all, I love you_.

Inuyasha knew he was a selfish bastard, but he'd never realized how selfish until just that very moment. He knew it would probably be better for Kagome in the long run if she remained in her own time; if she was spared the life of being with a lowly hanyou, but he didn't care. Well, he _cared_…but there wasn't anything he could, or _would_ do about it. The fact remained that, provided she was given the choice, he wanted her with him. He didn't think he could live without her, and despite the fact that he knew he should give her up for her sake, he knew he couldn't do it. He couldn't let her go. He _wouldn't_ let her go. Did that make him a selfish bastard? Hell yeah. But somehow, he had the feeling that Kagome would forgive him for it…

_**When our lights meet, will you know me then, **__**and will you want to know it?**_

_**It feels like I've known you for so long.**_

_**When our lights meet, will you want me then, **__**and will you ever know it?**_

_**It seems like you've known me for so long.**_

Staring unblinkingly at her ceiling, Kagome permitted her mind to continue to wander along the path it'd attempted to take her down all evening. She prayed that in the end, it would all work out, somehow. She had faith in herself, and in Inuyasha, and she knew that they could deal with whatever the fates threw at them. She only hoped that they'd be dealing with it together. She knew they still had a long way to go as far as dealing with their feelings was concerned, but Kagome believed in destiny, and couldn't fathom that she had truly been meant to meet a person as remarkable as Inuyasha, only to be ripped away from him in the end. Yes, there was still darkness in her heart, just as there was still darkness in his, but they were slowly healing each other, and she knew that the lingering darkness that remained was merely a shadow temporarily blocking their light.

_**When our hearts meet, will we make it then?**_

_**Will we even notice that they are eclipsed?**_


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